


Each and Every

by knitmeapony



Category: Scion (Tabletop RPG)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-05-11
Updated: 2016-05-24
Packaged: 2018-06-07 17:06:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 5,555
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6814642
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/knitmeapony/pseuds/knitmeapony
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One hundred words, precisely, for every year in the life of Elizabeth Rebecca Delmonico</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. 1928-1937

**1928**

She is born precisely at dawn, a fact she never learns but would consider tremendously appropriate.  There is no one there to see it; a goddess does not need a midwife and her father is off travelling, somewhere bright and shiny and glamourous.  

She is spoken to in a language she will never understand, and she cries.  She is taken from a place she will never be again, and put in the welcoming arms of a lonely woman.  Her home is warm and filled with cheerful noise.

She will never remember these days, but they will be everything to her.

 

**1929**

They love her down at the flower shop; she likes to hide behind bushels of daisies, hand roses to customers, to wave goodbye through the shop window once the strangers have gone away.

It's good she doesn't fear strangers; she has a dozen sisters, fifty aunts, a hundred cousins who all come to meet her.  They introduce half the people who come through the shop as 'family', and she allows most of them a sweetly grave handshake.

Woe betide those who refuse the gesture; as unsteady as she is on her feet, she is persistent and sharp in her attacks.

 

**1930**

Every game begins when a dark haired doll, seated on a tiny chair, is named 'Mama'. It is never touched again.

Sometimes she plays cops and robbers, sometimes soldiers, sometimes fairytales that she's been told over and over again.  She plays noisily, all shrieks and clangs.  There's no romance to the war.

Every game ends with a doll in a red dress who saves the day -- and someone dies.  They get to sit up on the chair with 'Mama' and the game begins again.   Eventually there is only the red dress, and she babbles to it quietly.  

Her sisters worry.

 

**1931**

When asked her name, she pronounces every syllable with care.  She is Elizabeth, not Lizzy, not Beth, not Eliza.  She lives at the Queen's Garden Flower Shop with her sisters.  Her favorite color is blue, but she likes daisies best.

She is not afraid to make her displeasure known, though she's mostly grown out of tantrums; she will fix you with eyes too bright and wait for you to apologize.  If you do not, she simply refuses to acknowledge you exist.  More than that; if asked, she'll simply say "they're dead".  They've had a few scares; strangers do not understand.

 

**1932**

She hears a low rumbling voice downstairs and she knows her father has come home.  She races down the steps, still in her nightgown, and he's waiting for her, ready to scoop her up and swing her up to the ceiling when she flings herself into his arms.

"Where have you been?"

"Out making a mint, Lizzy dear."

"You bring me anything?"

"Only stories," he says, but her pocket is heavy with the pennies he's slipped inside.

He kisses her forehead and that is enough.  The warmth is in her bones and she'll smile all winter, even after he's gone.

 

**1933**

She runs wild through the streets -- she is too young for school but too old to sit idle in the shop, making flower crowns and singing nonsense songs.  (She doesn't understand when her cousin calls her Ophelia but his laugh makes her furious.   He ends with scratches on his face and never comes back.)

She runs wild, and no one stops her.  She finds herself wishing she didn't live in the city; too much brick and stone.  When she runs she thinks of trees, of water, of caves and damp, endless darkness.

She is always laughing.  Her sisters worry less.

 

**1934**

"I have a new story to tell you," her sister promised.  "About our mother, and her husband, and who we all grow to be.  Who you will grow to be."

"Tell me."

"Your blood is rare, and beautiful.  It is the spring and the dawn; it is the autumn and the darkness.  She is why you keep what you keep in your closet; he is why you keep what you keep under your bed."

"And me?"

"And you, my darling girl, are special.  You will be just like her someday."

Elizabeth smiled, staring into the fire. "I am already."

"Yes."

 

**1935**

Her hand throbbed and her eyes pricked with tears, but she refused to move.  The ruler came down again.  Again.  Again.

She lifted her chin, fury unabated, and refused to look her teacher in the eye.  Teacher - hah - as if she had something to _teach_.  

"This can be over," the woman said, full up with irritation.  "Simply apologize.  No permanent harm was done."

"No," said Elizabeth through clenched teeth.  "She deserved it."

"Why?"

She could share the story; she knew she had judged right.  Still, there was a more important answer.

"Because _I_ decided."

The ruler came down.  Again.  Again.

  


**1936**

Most girls know skipping-rope rhymes; few write their own.

_Pa sells lightning by the case / Red like blood and blue like sky / Mother doesn't show her face / Though she's always standing by._

No one would sing with her, but she was happy alone.

_And my sisters all are here / we will all wait for the day / birds will fall and we will hear / no more songs and no more play_

Actually, she _insisted_ on singing alone.

_Mother's here and she will ask / all is well now come along / I shall have a single task / I shall never do it wrong_

  


**1937**

She raced home with a six-day-old newspaper in her pocket.  "Can we go?"  She thrust the story in her aunt's hands, breathless and vibrating with delight.

"To see the _bridge_?  It's only a bridge, Elizabeth."

But oh, what a bridge.  What a _marvel_.   She could all but hear the music of the wires, feel the sway of the road as the wind kicked up across the bay.  Two thousand miles away, but close enough to _touch_ , it seemed.  

"No, we can not go."

She kept the paper under her mattress for months, traced her fingers along the fading photograph, _wished_. 


	2. 1938-1940

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A turning of the tide

**1938**

She woke up at midnight, though nothing was wrong.  Sometimes the night was the wrong time for sleeping, that's all.  She snuck out of bed and hopped up to sit on the windowsill, feet dangling out over the street.

She could feel something in the air -- a fire burning, too far away to worry about but close enough to make her thrill.  A storm, on the edge of arriving.

She fell asleep there, watching the stars move slowly across the sky; she woke up just in time to catch herself from slipping off her perch to the hard earth below.  
  


**1939**

She woke up at midnight, screaming, knowing something was wrong.  She was feverish and she fought her sisters when they pulled her back to bed.

Everyone was already pale and nervous but her illness was making it worse.  They kept her indoors; they fed her too much or not enough; they let her drink whiskey; they pushed endless cups of water into her hands.  None of it stayed down.  None of it took the fire and the fear out of her eyes.

Six days passed before she slept; when she awoke it was over.  She cried without reason for weeks.

 

**1940**

Her sisters said 'happy birthday' like a promise, but she knew it wasn't quite; there were men in the house, now, ones they were beholden to.  Cousins, and they watched her with pity in their eyes.  

The gifts were sparse but at least her sisters knew her; a knife for her pocket, a ribbon for her hair, a dime for every year she'd been alive.  It was an absolute fortune and she hid it carefully away -- any more lies and she'd be leaving home for good.

  
"All will be well," her sisters swore, but for the first time she doubted.


	3. 1941-1949

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which she becomes her mother's daughter; in which she becomes nothing in particular.

**1941**

She likes to speak in short, declarative statements.  She likes to speak with specificity, clarity.  She won't say 'mayhaps' instead of 'no', she won't say 'let's chat' when she means 'yes, and you can't stop me'.

If her mother is no longer an uncompromising force, then she will be.  There is work to be done.

She finds other girls, ones tired of home in different ways, of shouting, of bruises.  She hides them in basements.  When their families ask about them, she shouts back, bruises back.

She hears whispers about how the fever broke her mind; they make her laugh.

 

**1942**

Her cousins invade her life.  They generously give her shoes, then tell her that she _must_ wear them.  Every gift has a caveat, every kindness has strings.

They are there for her own good, they say. She can eat, sleep in a bed, go to school. She owes them nothing; she owes them everything.  She hates that both are true.

They used to treat her like she was made of diamond and steel.  Now, it's crystal and silver -- beautiful, not powerful.  

They are going to war, one by one.  The thought of an empty house keeps her warm at night.  

 

**1943**

She runs wild through the streets, and though she is laughing there is no ease to it.  She hasn't gone home in months, though she will break in now and then to steal what she needs.  They leave her tributes on the roof, as it should be.

She lives with the girls she has hidden away.  She can look at a building and see where there might be empty spots, tell what roofs will hold secrets and which will be safe.  They sleep carefully, eat infrequently, but they are happier than before.

She knows it can't be this way forever.

 

**1944**

The war is never ending, but that suits her just fine; so many of her cousins have left that the shop has become recognizable again.  Still, she doesn't move back home; she tried, but it is too hard to sleep in her old bedroom.  She wakes up retching and shivering, unseen hands on her arms, on her throat.  She'll take the roof when she can and the kitchen when she must.  

Her girls  try to bring her repayment, money, come to work in the shop, but she won't allow it.  Her gifts have no strings.  She vows they never will.

 

**1945**

Her sisters are prescient and clever and wise; they learned from her cousins, changed what they needed to, and they are no longer reliant.  It doesn't matter if anyone comes home from the war.  Elizabeth hopes that none of them do.

Except she isn't Elizabeth, now.  Her father calls her Lizzy, still, but everyone else calls her Eliza; she doesn't like her old name, especially in whispers.  

She grows calm, again, surrounded by her sisters.  Especially in the winter, she can breathe indoors if she must.  She heals like a broken bone; never the same, stronger at her weakest places.

 

**1946**

"She's not coming."

"I know."

"There often is no reason why."

"I understand."

"It changes nothing, for you."

But it did.

How long before she was no longer a maiden?  How long before she could only be a servant, not a successor?  She stood bravely in front of them all when they told her but alone she cried --  large, gulping howls that her sisters kindly refused to hear.

She wasn't entirely bereft; there was a gift in lieu of visitation.  She did not want a gift, she wanted a _purpose_. She did not have the power to create her own.

 

**1947**

Her girls have grown up too, and they have gone to other places; there were jobs on farms, in factories, in hospitals, safely away from what drove them there.  Now, too, there are husbands, children, happiness; they send her letters, often, and money too.  

Gifts, she reasons.  Tributes.  Not strings.

She keeps a ledger; she watches it grow.  First coins, then bills, then enough she has to hide it.  Twice her cousins find it, take it from her.  After that she takes to pinning up her hair, covering it in paste-jewelry; they never see the real stones amongst the glass.

 

**1948**

There are men -- not cousins, but dangerous men -- who are learning that she is dangerous too.  They are hardly important, in the larger scheme of things, but in the neighborhood they are staples.  She is learning how to manage them; which to frighten, which to pay.  Which to take into her bed.  

She only deals with good ones; there are some that she watches, judges, finds wanting or worse.  Them, she destroys.  She takes money, wives, children.  She burns houses.

There are dangerous men who think of her as dangerous too.  She is forgetting there are different definitions of 'immortality'.  

 

**1949**

She is her mother's daughter at last, and gloriously proud of it, but she's learning the stakes are both too small and too big for her.  She cannot keep up with the Scions who have their gifts. She is feeling stifled by her position among the mortals.  She decides she must get out.  

  
All the classics end up in her room; Machiavelli, Weber, Mills.  More important: Wallstonecraft, Goldman, Sanger.  First she only writes in margins, but then she begins in earnest, filling every inch, every scrap of paper she can with her unsteady scrawl, with her thoughts, with her _plans_.


	4. 1950-1957

**1950**

Plans are not purpose, but they are _something_ ; they are domesticating her but not enough to make her worry.  She still puts flowers and jewels in her hair every morning; she still wears the same dresses she's torn and mended more times than she can count. But now there are leather boots and sturdy coats; there are nods to the fashions, slashes of lipstick, stockings, hemlines above the ankle.

Plans require tools, require knowledge, require effort.  They require acceptance, here and there, even if only at the back door.  They require a name that's a _name_ , and she's getting there.

 

**1951**

She watches more than acts these days, reads more than she moves.  She sees the petty games of small men hobbling great ones, and she swears to herself _that shall never be me, on either side_.  

She makes lists of what she is supposed to want: family, children, home.

She makes lists of what she actually craves: reputation, partnership, property in _her_ name.

She finds the places where they intersect.   She draws paths to them, one decision at a time.  She tells no one of her ends; if they can not learn from her means, she has not acted well.

 

**1952**

She's remembering what she was given by her mother, and realizing for the first time how valuable it is.  She's beginning to believe that she wasn't forgotten or left behind, just judged unworthy and unfinished.

She's beginning to believe that if she carves a perfect woman out of the rough marble she's been given, perhaps then she will be enough.  Perhaps her mother will come for her, one way or the other.

She is twenty-three years old; she is seventeen years old; she is only just beginning.  She works magic for the first time, manifesting things she's written into reality.

 

**1953**

Her oldest sister dies, and leaves her the flower shop; she lets her other sisters run it as they will.  All she needs is the basement; she can hide things there and they won't ask questions.  Women, often, children sometimes; now and then there are other things.  Money in the walls.  Secrets under the stones.

Her mother needed no law but her own to judge; neither would she.  There is work to be done.

Her cousins come to her, sometimes, for help -- she extends them a courtesy, a kindness they never gave _her_ : she tells them the price up front.

 

**1954**

She thinks, not for the first time, of moving to New York or San Francisco. She knows it can't be this way forever, but what use would a woman like her be, away from her connections?  You cannot broker information if you have none.

She rarely sleeps at home, but spends her days in the beds of the people she trusts.  Alone, of course, and without their knowledge.  She knows it's a gamble to trust security that she can defeat, but her enemies are rarely as clever as she is. There's no romance to this war, but it's a living.

 

**1955**

The dangerous men are grateful she leaves them alone. She's moved out of the old neighborhood, moved up in the world;  suddenly they are sad, old men who will only remember that they knew her _before_.

At least they understand: she acts on behalf of the truly dangerous, these days.   Strangers rarely see why they should fear a grey-eyed girl of seventeen with flowers and costume jewelry in her hair. Her patrons like this; they do not send any harbingers.  She simply arrives, unbidden, alone.

When given respect, she grants kindnesses; opportunities to repent, to sell, to walk away unharmed.

 

**1956**

Her sisters come to her to remind her: she is not as free as she would like to be.  The work is good, and she's made her reputation -- for that alone they grant her another decade as a maiden.   They remind her: she is neither sun nor moon, nor even earth, but something far below.  

They remind her that she is as much shadow as she is blood, as much silence as scream.  She shows them her plan.  

She will need to bury her past to be something new; they agree to move away, one by one, and make room.

 

**1957**

The man who bought the flower shop looked threateningly familiar.  She didn't care until she learned he wouldn't keep the shop running; he'd lied.  Now that the sale was final he began gleeful work gutting the place.

She visited him, asked why, and he talked until she recognized him twice; once when he put a hand on her and whispered 'Elizabeth'; then the other hand, and he called her Ophelia.

It took two officers to pull her off; he left with more than scratches on his face, this time.  They locked her in a hospital until the money ran out.


	5. 1958-1966

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A second beginning.

**1958**

They pushed her out before dawn -- into the grey that usually heralded a storm on the edge of arriving.  There was no one waiting - she doubted anyone knew -- so she made a slow way home and began a circuit through the old neighborhood.

She spared no thought for him, nor the wealth he'd taken from her. There'd be time enough for that.  

In one of the old caches she found what she was really looking for: a notebook, robins-egg blue, with a carefully outlined plan inside.  She smiled, then called on her last employer.  There was work to be done.

 

**1959**

Here's what her employers know: she doesn't ask for money, these days, she asks for _things_ \-- she prefers the specificity.  Her family keeps her head above water with food, with clothes, but there are things that are much more precious than that -- an invitation to a certain party, an introduction to a certain person.  While she's unpredictable she's _cheap_ and she's very, very thorough.  You don't hire Eliza for a last-minute job, you give her time and space. The job _will_ get done.

She asks for honesty and sincerity in return -- for some that's too dear a price.  Pity, that.  

 

**1960**

Here's what her employers don't know: she is almost always lying to them.  She needs time to understand the job.  She needs space to judge.

She works for criminals -- arranging accidents, collecting photographs, worse -- but they're not always on the wrong side. Some of this work is for the greater good.  Some deserve what they get.  

Those cases, she handles as requested -- quick, quiet -- but she alone will judge the rightness of an action.  She prevents harm or punishes by her own will.

Sometimes this means that she herself must be judged. She'll deal with that when her mother comes.

 

**1961**

Her father dies in the springtime, and though she hasn't seen him in years she can still feel his warmth down in her bones.  There's still something there, some ember she can fan into a flame.

When she registers for school, she writes his name down as her own -- Lizzy Delmonico -- and the few who would think to question it would never dare.  This was the payment she demanded from her patrons -- not money, not power, but a life begun again.  The _things_ she earned let her build a foundation, the first steps of her plan laid out before her.

 

**1962**

It is frightening to her how easy it is to fall into a new routine.  Shoes, every morning.  Class, four days a week.  Dresses and haircuts and time in an office, earning her keep. She tells everyone that she's going to be a lawyer.  Some laugh; those she ignores.  Some are helpful, hopeful -- she takes every kindness and returns it to them when she can.

One tries to use it against her, to get her alone.  She laughs at him -- and later she speaks his name in the right places.  By Christmas, he's moved to Philadelphia, or so she's told.  

 

**1963**

When she traveled she could be someone else, and she almost always tried.  She didn't have the patience for anything complicated, so it's always just a name and a single detail.   Sophie played tennis.  Martha giggled at every joke.  Minnie was married; Trish was lonely.  It worked long enough, it got her what she wanted: temporary escape from a dull, slow, and unhappy life.

She endured it because it was both a price and punishment: the price of who she wanted to be and the punishment for who she had been.  When her mother came, all debts would be paid.

 

**1964**

She'd been in love at least twice.  She still kept pictures of them in a lockbox under someone else's name.  She added a third photograph to the pile on a Thursday, then came back on a Saturday and burned all three.

They all called her the same things - mercurial, dangerous, thrilling, brilliant.  They all had the same manner -- clever, dark, secretive, quiet.  A flame shouldn't court a moth, but she'd stayed with each as long as she could; when the time was right she sent them away. She'd know it was meant to be when they refused to leave her.

 

**1965**

She knew she couldn't disappear completely, but she thought it would take less time for them to forget.  People come to her, sometimes, ask her if she's _that_ Eliza, if she won't just have a beer, listen to the pitch, hear them out, take on just one more job.

Some of them are police, fishing.  She's less careful now about her identity and she doesn't mind if they can find her.  There's nothing tying her to her old jobs but the word of criminals.  There's everything tying her to the mercies she performed.  Let them find that, if they liked.

 

**1966**

Her sisters come to see her, proud: "your every action, sweetheart, makes you worthy."

Since they left, she's made herself a different kind of name, one written on sheepskin and meaningfully so.

(She finds it much more meaningful that these days she sleeps through the night.)

She thanks them all so sincerely that there are tears in her eyes.  Step one, complete.  Step two, begun.  It's taken longer than she thinks it should, but she has as long as she needs.  She _may_ have eternity.

Still, for all the merriment she does not laugh -- she hardly smiles.  Her sisters worry.


	6. 1967-1977

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The darkest decade - she blooms in the dark.

**1967**

She's found work in a different office, now, one with a name that far exceeds her own.  Harry is a fair boss, and he lets her indulge her curiosity -- she does work far above her station on nights and weekends, researching, drafting.  Some of the associates take her work, revise it, pass it off as their own; she doesn't mind.

And through it all: questions.  Reasons.  Decisions.  Who has the power, prosecutor or judge?  Appointment or election?  Domestic, foreign, or multinational corporate?  In what order: money, knowledge, power?  She takes Harry's advice, his wife's, his father's.  She learns.  She rises.

 

**1968**

She makes lists, she makes plans, and they are everything to her.  She wakes up at midnight, fear in her bones, and writes them again.  Again. Again. She can not afford to rest.

Her sisters worry; strangers do not understand.  There's fire in her -- and madness, though no one calls her Ophelia.  It's Lady MacBeth, now.  Ambition scores her every move.

There's no romance to the war, but she forces a smile, a laugh, and in the lie she feels better.  

She knows it can't be this way forever -- too much will kill her - but _enough_ will make her worthy.

 

**1969**

She'll let herself be seen, now and then, by the family.  She likes the look of horror on her cousins' faces.   _That one_ survived?  Yes, and she's doing better than _you_.  No one will talk about her mother; she learns to not say her name.  She's just family.  That's enough.

She tells them she needs money and they let her earn it, tie her back up in the cult's business - protecting the walls of a prison fits in with her plans. She laments that during the last real attempt at an escape she was home with a fever.  Next time.

 

**1970**

She had been diamond and glass, steel and silver -- now, she was stone.  They see her, sweet faced and clear-eyed, and they expect softness.  They hear her laugh and they expect frivolity.  Her first semester caught them all by surprise; she was ruthless, she was driven, she could not be stirred from her path.  She proved herself to her professors; helped or humiliated her classmates as she judged necessary.  

She left nothing in her wake.  Took everything she could touch.  And finally, her name on that list, high above the others: she felt worthy.  She had learned her mother's way.

 

**1971**

"I should've known," she said, allowing the woman gently flex her hand and fingers, one by one.  "A bearcat like you doesn't come by that blood from mortals."

The woman snorted, amused.  "I don't think anything's broken. You need to be more careful. I can't believe your family invited a mortal to fight."

"They didn't.  I go where I like."

"Well, stop.  You'll give me a heart attack."

"Well, _I_  hear you're already dead."

"In a way.  Still.  Don't."

The tone caught Liz's breath.  Her sisters trusted her; her cousins were afraid of her.  She was not prepared for _this_.

 

**1972**

She had made herself into something entirely new.  The boots had given way to heels; the dresses to skirts and jackets.  Makeup was no longer an afterthought; the jewels in her hair were for their style, not for their worth.

Still, sitting amongst her cousins, she couldn't help but feel that nothing had changed at all.

Each of them had their answers; she had none.  Each of them had found a purpose; she had built hers out of nothing.

They had their powers given; she had taken hers by tooth and nail.

It made her worthy.  It made her _better_.

 

**1973**

She passed the bar and found employment on the same day.  

"Harry says you're…"

"Yes."

"And that you have, in the past…"

"Without hesitation."

"And you're not concerned…"

"If I was, I wouldn't have come."

"No one will take you seriously in a courtroom."  

(She was forty-five; she was nineteen.)  "I know.  There are better places to be."

"Where do you see yourself in ten years?"

"On the bench.  Federal in fifteen."

"Ambitious."

"You have no idea."

"I'd like to pull you out of our first-year associate pool.  Send you to Turkey.  There are some operations there that need oversight."

 

**1974**

Most of her job was paperwork.  Casefiles, transcripts, reports to review.  She demanded a measure of scientific rigor in their work; she tracked their success using certain methodologies, with certain commanders.  She made decisions based on the numbers and there was nowhere to appeal; no one at home office wanted to know the details.  The need for plausible deniability had done more for her deification than having the blood of a goddess.

They said she'd burn out in a month, six, a year; she outlived everyone's predictions.  Paperwork, though, was dull.  On her birthday, she put herself in the field.

 

**1975**

Her condo was a cold place, even in June, but the view was beautiful.  

She was using a month of leave to heal, to grow stronger. She had a rule: she wouldn't do anything to others that hadn't been done to her, first. Her joints ached; her hands were rough and sore, her skin still raw in places.  It felt like justification enough.  She felt hollow, but complete.

She returned to the letter she was writing her sisters, telling them nothing, telling them everything.  She didn't want them to worry.   _I've been promoted already_ , she said.   _Mother would be proud._

 

**1976**

Her sisters came to Greece to grant her ten more years; her eternity was hardly the first thing on her mind.  Cousins were circling, all there to celebrate the ending of the year -- and among them, a man with a twisted hand and a scarred face who did not recognize her, not even with flowers in her hair.  Twenty years could mute even the sharpest memory.

She asked after him, learned where he lived, kept out of his view, _planned_.

She bared her teeth -- or maybe smiled. There were dangerous men, and they owed her favors. She called them in.

 

**1977**

She knows time dilates, down here -- a minute is an eternity.  She takes _twenty_ , watches on the surveillance until she's sure the damp and the cold have sunk deep into his bones.  The door shudders open at her command; her heels click hollow on dirty cement.

"Remember me now?" she asks; the way his breath catches is more telling than his _yes_.  "Relax, I'm not here to kill you.  Ophelia never hurt a soul.  I _am_ here to leave you behind."  

He calls her name as the door locks, but she is gone. She thinks of him often, relieved, regretful.


	7. 1978-1982

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Another moment of turning. Content warning: suicidal intent.

**1978**

"So what should we do?"

"Drink.  I can get into bars, now."

"You could get into bars during World War II."

"True, but now they'll believe me."  She flashed her new ID.

"Huh. Didn't know you had a middle name."

"I do now."

"Twenty… nine? I suppose that's believable."

"Makes you less of a cradle robber."

"You're two decades older than me."

"But a lady, so it doesn't count." She smirked and wound an arm around her waist.  "Buy a girl a drink?  I ship out Tuesday."

"Where?"

"Back to Syria.  As long as they can't ID us, we're hot."

 

**1979**

"I heard you hit bingo fuel but I had to see it for myself."  He was a smug son of a bitch and the implication was loud and clear.

"Believe it or not."  She leaned back in her chair -- _her_ chair, _her_ office, home base in Chicago -- and forced a smile.  "Plus I needed to establish res if I'm going to run next year."

"That's right.  Bench in ten, federal in fifteen.  You're behind schedule."

"What can I say, Jim?  I fell in love with the work."

That made him wince.    _Good_ , she thought.   _Don't forget who you're talking to._

 

**1980**

"Where is she?"

"Locked in her office."

"Have they announced?"

"Sort of.  It wasn't even close enough to make the six o'clock."

"Well that is… bad.  She okay?"

"Would you be?  Nine months and six figures and she loses the election by twelve points."

"Yikes."  

"Oh yeah."

"So…?"

"So take a bottle of champagne and go home."

"Hm.  What do you think they'll do?"  

"The company?  Ship her back overseas.  She's good at her job, and it'll be ten years before the party touches her again."

"Jesus."

"Yeah.  She knew it was coming.  She just didn't want to believe it."

 

**1981**

PARTIAL TRANSCRIPT FROM DELMONICO EXIT INTERVIEW

GORDON: YOU'RE ONLY AN ASSET TO THE COMPANY IF YOU'RE EMPLOYED BY US.  RETHINK THIS, ELIZABETH.

DELMONICO: DO YOU KNOW HOW MANY FILES I HAVE SENT TO THE BURN ROOM OVER THE LAST FIFTEEN YEARS?

GORDON: WHAT'S YOUR POINT?  YOU KNOW WHERE THE BODIES ARE BURIED?

DELMONICO: NO, THAT I KNOW HOW THE SYSTEM WORKS.  CHECK THE BURN ROOM RECORDS.  ASSUME I HAVE COPIES OF EVERY SINGLE ONE.

GORDON: AND?

DELMONICO: I CAN EITHER BE A JUDGE WITH A GENEROUS SEVERANCE PACKAGE OR A PROSECUTOR WITH A VENDETTA.

GORDON: OFFSHORE, I ASSUME?

DELMONICO: OBVIOUSLY.

 

**1982**

Her condo was empty; everything had been sold.  

All she had left -- outside of her liquidated assets -- was a box of keepsakes,  some very expensive wine, and a gun.

_No family.  No career, political or otherwise.  No mother.  Nothing._

She kept the gun in easy reach as she looked through the box.  Photographs.  Ribbons.  Nineteen diamonds in a wooden case.  A notebook...

 _The_ notebook.  Robins-egg blue, and filled with the plan. _And now every page a failure…_ _hm, except one._

She tore out that page and considered it.

She put the gun in her purse, and took out a pen.


End file.
